v0.8.0 "WeAreStardust"

The gain-staging release: an end-to-end external circuit review of
v0.7.0 (every netlist against the drawing, every shipping DSP block
against its netlist) found the last places where the model departed
from the circuit for a desired result, and this release removes them.
The volume control is back where the drawing puts it, the power amp
has its drawn bass shelf, and the plugin's output is referenced to the
amplifier's rail rather than trimmed to a target. Levels are lower and
the dynamic range is the instrument's own; level-to-taste belongs
downstream.

Changed — the sound

• Volume is the drawn pot. The control now sets the position of the
  10K main volume pot between the preamp and the power amp, solved as
  drawn and loaded: preamp output → R-9 → R-11 reed-bar trimmer → pot →
  wiper against the amp's R-27 input, with C-9 as the volume-dependent
  treble pole. Since 2026-04 the amp's drive had been pinned and volume
  applied after the speaker so that full volume could never clip the
  amp; that was a level-convenience departure from the circuit and is
  retired. The amp's operating point now follows the pot, as on the
  instrument, and its clip knee is reachable at full volume with a hot
  trim. Default position 0.80.
• Power amp bass shelf. The behavioral amp models the drawn R-30 /
  C-10 feedback leg inside its loop: 69× in band, unity at DC, −3 dB at
  33 Hz, −1.3 dB at the lowest A. The amp is split-rail and DC-coupled,
  so this is the circuit's only bass roll-off; the model had none.
• Output referenced to the rail. The post-speaker gain is retired as
  a gain: the output mapping is stated in circuit units, 22 V at the amp
  output (its clip ceiling) = 0 dBFS. An "over" can therefore only ever
  mean the amp clipped, and the output cannot exceed full scale at any
  setting (a structural test sweeps trim, tremolo and speaker character
  to prove it; the residual ~1 % is the decimator's response to a
  clipped edge). At the defaults a fortissimo six-note chord peaks
  −11.6 dBFS and a fortissimo single note −18.8, speaker bypassed.
• Keyboard balance re-trimmed on this chain through the real engine
  at two velocities; bass and mid anchors move by up to 1.3 dB. The top
  octave keeps a residual velocity split that no trim can close.
• Speaker character 0 is a true passthrough. The 20 Hz and 20 kHz
  "bypass" filters no longer run at zero; neither is a circuit element,
  and the lowpass overshot rail-clipped edges by up to 0.7 dB.

Added

• Reed Bar Trim parameter (0–25 kΩ): R-11, the per-unit factory
  trimmer ahead of the volume pot. The A-series board has no documented
  setting, and every 200A left the factory somewhere on its travel, so it
  is exposed as the per-unit setting it is. Its default (17.2K) reproduces
  the manufacturer's end-to-end sensitivity calibration for the preceding
  Model 200 board (60 mV in → 4.75 V into 8 Ω at full volume), whose
  trimmer a drawing trace showed to be the same element — an inference,
  outranked by a bench reading when one exists. Toward 0 Ω the amp
  reaches its clip knee on fortissimo chords at full volume.
• alias-audit --volume and render-midi --r11 in preamp-bench.

Changed — SPICE

• Pickup deck rewritten to a current-source interface: the polarizing
  voltage is internal, the plate is an AC node, and R-1 is external, so
  the pickup and preamp subcircuits no longer instantiate the input
  network twice in the full-chain and harmonic-audit benches. The
  pickup → R-1 → base corner measures 836 Hz at the base (987 Hz at the
  plate); the code's 880 Hz reference is left as is, and the discrepancy
  is recorded as open.
• Power-amp deck corrected to the drawing (both copies, landed
  atomically with the sidecar-validation mirror): R-28's tail returns to
  the +15 V regulated rail, C-13/C-14 across the drivers, and the R-40 /
  C-15 output Zobel. The opt-in generated solver is regenerated at the
  pinned compiler. The deck still idles near class B against the
  manual's 10 mA set point; a sourced card for the house-number driver
  parts is the outstanding fix.

Fixed

• preamp-bench's hand-rolled output chains (render, calibrate, two
  audits) still ran the pre-2026-04 volume-squared topology; they now
  follow the engine.
• Documentation drift across the research docs and source comments:
  shipping defaults, gain-staging figures (re-measured), the tremolo LED
  path, the VAS designator, the pickup corner-scaling figures, the
  oscillator deck header, and the 10 mA output-bias target now sourced
  to the service manual.
• tb_power_amp's −3 dB measure never evaluated (braces are literal in a
  control block).

Known issues

• The behavioral amp's crossover notch is the wrong shape and size for
  this stage (measured on the deck at the factory bias band: shallower
  and 10–80× wider than modeled), and its open-loop gain lacks the
  Miller pole. With the pot in the circuit the default drive sits where
  that residual dominates the click band. Next release.
• Reed Bar Trim default and the pot taper are inferences pending a bench
  measurement; so are the pickup capacitance and C-2's return.

Full Changelog: v0.7.0...v0.8.0